


detangler

by clairelutra, volpish



Category: T-REXな彼女 | My Girlfriend is a T-Rex (Manga)
Genre: Bad self-care habits, F/M, First Kiss, Hair Brushing, Tooth-Rotting Fluff, non-human biology
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-14
Updated: 2020-08-14
Packaged: 2020-09-01 04:56:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,465
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20252539
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/clairelutra/pseuds/clairelutra, https://archiveofourown.org/users/volpish/pseuds/volpish
Summary: Churio is a totally scary T-Rex who couldn'tpossiblybe brought down by a measly hairbrush, really!Yuuma helps her escape it anyway.





	detangler

**Author's Note:**

  * For [OneEntireBee](https://archiveofourown.org/users/OneEntireBee/gifts).

> hello, OneEntireBee~ i saw your request for my girlfriend is a t-rex and remembered that i'd been meaning to read this manga for AGES, and OH MY GOD IT'S ADORABLE. i'm working on getting every one i know into it because holy _heck_ it's the best thing. thank you so much for the nudge.
> 
> the prompts i was working on drawing from here are: yuuma/churio slice of life, fluff, grooming & bathing, cultural differences, and casual xenobiology. hope you enjoy!
> 
> (NOTE: fic was originally posted under the username arcanawildcard and has since been transferred to the author's other sock, volpish.)

Churio was sulking.

That in itself wasn't particularly unusual, but the hairbrush stuck in her mane was.

"What happened?" Yuuma asked. He had an inkling as to who the culprit was, and the tale behind this particular situation was bound to be amusing.

Churio growled, that delightful grating-chirrup-snarl noise that sat as low in her body as high, and hissed, "Trica said I needed to change my hair f'r _variety._ Tried to change it. That hurt, dammit." Then she flinched, flushing. "N-not that I care about some measly little comb or whatever. I can take thi— _ow-w-w_..."

Yuuma, who'd picked his way across the wreckage of her apartment so he could see better, pulled the unwillingly imposed accessory away from her skull and inspected it.

It was well and truly tangled in there, strands of not-quite-hair wrapped and knotted around the bristles, the longer ones looped around the back keeping it firmly in place—it looked like she'd tried to get free on her own and failed spectacularly. He traced down one edge of the brush, then started to carefully work it free, mindful of delicate scalps.

"Hey, hey, hey, whaddaya think you're— _ow_..."

"Sorry," he said, stroking through... they were almost feathers, weren't they. Something between fine down and very, very, _very_ fine pinfeathers. "Give me a minute."

For all that her mane looked relatively kept, the brush seemed to have gotten locked in actual _mats,_ the not-hair beneath the veneer nigh impenetrable.

Nigh impenetrable, not fully impenetrable.

After working the brush free, Yuuma found the bottom of the mat, rubbing the thick tangles between his fingers, then applying the newly-freed brush to the locks that surrounded it.

It was so easy to get lost in the task that when Churio hunkered down on the floor, he followed her, halfway up the ponytail and still going strong. It was disappointing to find that her bangs were mostly loose, letting him drag the brush from the top of her scalp to her waist with less resistance than he expected.

"There we go," he said, removing the not-hair from the brush and dropping it in the trash.

"Eh? 'S over?" Her cheeks were pink and her eyes were glazed. She let out a yawn that was less jaw-cracking than usual, then inspected his handiwork. "Woah."

He smiled fondly as she played with her newly freed locks—fanning them into a cape, grabbing a clawful and letting it feather down, sniffing it, and then, predictably, attempting to take a bite.

It was a shame to do it to such pretty hair, but he'd expected no less.

The face she made at it was _amazing._ She immediately started attempting to get it out of her mouth, hacking and scrabbling at her face with those huge claws, instinctively standing and stumbling back, attempting to escape her own mane.

"Ah, wait-wait-wait," said Yuuma when it looked like she was going to trample his entire apartment in her flight. "Let me help—_ack!"_

It took several minutes of last second tail-dodging and appliance-rescuing, but eventually she calmed down enough to squat in the middle of the room and stoop so he could reach her face.

It was more intimate than he expected, brushing his fingertips over the corners of her mouth and tucking the longer strands behind her ears and rearranging her bangs so he could see her eyes. Slit pupils and oblong irises, yet they were a human sort of blue and innocently trusting, holding herself still so he could work.

His stomach flipped when he ran out of not-hair to take care of and found her face still in his hands.

He could kiss her like this, he thought, her cooler-than-human skin still warm under his palms and high up enough that he'd have to tug her down to bring their faces close enough. He could do that, thumb the tiny scales that patterned her cheeks and tongue the ones on her lips, stroke down her sides to feel those scales grow and grow until they made up the armor over her flank, feel the powerful muscle underneath, feel the shift of her breath and her breasts brushing against his chest.

He could do that, but she was blinking her confusion, obviously not understanding the implications of this position, so he let go. Kissing someone who didn't have a clue would be...

He scratched the back of his neck, face warming. "Ahh, there you go. Better now, right? We should tie that back for you again."

The tie she'd been using to hold her ponytail was easier to locate than expected, and when he turned back around, Churio was... studying him?

Churio never studied anything except for edibility, and she didn't look hungry.

He decided to leave it be—she'd tell him when she was ready—and instead gestured her back down so he could tie her mane back up into its customary style.

And then _he_ was the one doing the studying.

...There was something fundamentally _wrong_ with the sleeked ponytail, he decided at length. She looked _proper_ and _mellow_ and not wild at all. That still-thoughtful expression wasn't helping. He kind of wanted to put her in a pair of glasses to see if she could pull off 'sexy librarian.'

"And done," he said, because he didn't have any pairs of glasses lying around. It was a pity Numano was so attached to his.

That startled her out of her reverie. "Hey, wait."

"Wai—?"

He didn't get the chance to finish the word, because that was when Churio grasped _his_ face with infinitely careful claws, frowning at his mouth for a second before she leaned down and covered it with hers.

Warm nails almost the size of his head replaced the shift of her breathing, but he could still feel every scale on her lips, the gentle dampness beyond. The sinewy length of her tail curled around his legs, nudging him closer, the tip tracing his arm—

And then she pulled away with a very wet sort of noise.

There were a million questions swirling in his head, starting with, _wait, dinosaurs do this too?_ and ending with, _am I going to have a stroke?_ because he could feel his heartbeat in every part of his body and his face felt hotter than it ever had before and, oh, god, he hadn't been prepared for that in _any_ way at _all_...

She studied him with an embarrassed pout, adorably flustered even if it wasn't anywhere near as flustered as he felt. "Did I do that right?"

"Sorry, what?" Yuuma croaked.

"The kiss thing," she mumbled, straightening and rubbing her blush-reddened nose. "Kagishima said th' that was the human thing. The thing y' do with people you... l-like."

...He'd have to ask her about this conversation when her hair was back to normal. The sleek look was lending a layer of surreality to the conversation that left him doubting the sanity of everyone involved.

"Yeah... that was right," he said in the meantime, because if this was a fever trip, it was a very nice fever trip. "You got it." _And me._

Churio's face _lit up,_ a grin stretching from metaphorical ear to metaphorical ear.

Yuuma found himself abruptly yanked off balance, her tail tightening to send him crashing into her chest and her arms wrapping around his torso, her happy chittering in his ears and her tail tip wagging furiously as she nuzzled his head.

He was once again soundly reminded that Churio was a _total dork._

(A thought that was a lot... _more_ now that she was so much more than an adorable stranger, and this hug was doing strange things to his heart.)

"Chuuuurio!" someone—Trica—sang as they kicked the door open. "It took me ages and _ages,_ but I finally found my detangler— ...oh."

Yuuma reluctantly glanced over Churio's arm.

Trica stood it the doorway, a bottle of hair product just covering up her open mouth. There was a second of heavy silence, and then she grinned sheepishly and backed up. "I'll, uh... just leave you guys to it. Have fun!"

She backed out the door, then paused to add, "Oh, and awesome job with her hair! You should help me style it sometime."

With that, the door snapped shut behind her.

The silence fell back in place like a stone.

Yuuma was just about to break the silence with a reassurance that he liked Churio's hair exactly the way it was when she spoke.

"Can we do that again?"

Warmth bloomed in his stomach and spread out to his extremities, his mouth tingling awareness, an all too palpable degree of affection. "...Yeah. Of course."

Another set of chitters burst out of her throat, and then she happily handed him with the hairbrush.


End file.
